Friday, December 19, 2008

The Quest for Crunch to Alleviate Ennui

Now that my husband is a chauffeur instead of a developmental aid (the difference between wiping the backsides of folks with developmental disabilities and kissing the backsides of those with ethical disabilities), I am home again with my children.

Not that I ever ventured far. In the past, my husband and children dropped me off at class then picked me up when I was finished. This semester, I carpooled to the college with my parents and taught four classes (women's history, African American history, United States, and Western Civ.) on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Thursdays were my long days. I went in to work at 7:00 a.m. and arrived back home at 10:00 p.m. On all the other days of the week, I was home full time. It was the first time I've ever worked quite so much away from home but conveniently my husband was diagnosed with PTSD and put on a prolonged stress leave from his violent workplace. We always said we would never use daycare. Isn't it wonderful how the universe will provide? In this case, just when we needed a break from our old routine, the universe provided a deranged lunatic who tried to kill my husband. How we are blessed!

But now he's gone back to work and so I have returned to the role of homemaker in a more full-time way. I'll still be teaching three classes this next semester but only on Sundays and online. This means that already there have been some changes in the way the household functions. The floors are cleaner, there is less dust, dinners are more regimented and include more vegetables, and I'm a moody bitch.

I find that there may be some conflicts in my ability to adjust to this role of Hausfrau. For instance, I sometimes question whether or not it makes sense for a person with a PhD to be concerned with cleaning cat vomit off the floor. I also find that laundry is not as glamorous as I remember it. I find that even my Lehmann's catalog natural pine cleaner (not synthetic!) and my Dr. Bronner's are unable to alleviate my feeling that somehow, life could be more exciting.

I've told myself I would begin working on my own writing when I wasn't mired down with my students' lame-ass attempts at writing papers. That hasn't happened yet. In fact, so far, this blog is pretty much it. This, and a couple of angry posts I have erased because they were just so mean-spirited and ornery that even I couldn't stand myself after reading them. On top of feeling generally worthless and unattractive- a complete failure of a human being, I also have lost my faith in "God" (go ahead and read sarcastic dismissal in the quotation marks. It's in there.) and am in a state of unrelenting morbid anxiety punctuated only by groggy depression and hypersomnia.

This is always what happens when I graduate from college. Every frickin' time. I've been a lost soul since I handed in my dissertation. I'd start another degree program to help me shake off this funk but since I'm already a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt, I don't think my husband would approve. (God, I wish that last line was a joke.)

What will save me? I think I need to fashion meaning out of my situation. I maintain that what differentiates us from other creatures is our ability to make meaning out of meaninglessness. (At least that's what I told one of my classes one day and since they wrote it down, it must be true.) To that end, I will joyfully re-embrace my crunchiness which I now merely maintain without enthusiasm and basically as a hedge against the avalanche of guilt and self-loathing I feel whenever I so much as flush a toilet unnecessarily. I will now shift focus to more consciously and conscientiously embrace the Crunchy Earth Mama manifestation of myself. Let us see what comes of it.

(It is unfortunate that I have already had more than my share of offspring. Being pregnant is the most convenient way to move toward smug crunchiness. I could give birth in my living room while suckling my preschooler. Oh well. I guess that's out. I'll have to find some other way to be better than everyone else I know.)

4 comments:

Liebe Hysteryhexe, I wholeheartedly agree with Lone Star Ma. So many bloggers on the Web are entitled to, and perhaps deserving of, your informed and pithy comments. I'd even like to see you syndicated in print and on the air. Stephanie Miller and Randi Rhodes - watch out.

Lone Star Ma, I will indeed leave comments- at some point in the future. At this point, I keep composing comments then erasing them before pressing send. This is also why I've been blogging so sporadically. Karl's idea of me embracing my bloggerhood is tempting. If I get past this disjointed silence (so different than the more holy silences Friends seek)I'll be quite happy.

Liz, I think your analysis is spot on. I am a bit broken now. What gives me hope is that my own spiritual journey has always included longer or shorter stretches of darkness. Some of them have been a good deal darker than this one. They are periods of incubation out of which I am reborn. It is not for nothing that the goddess that presides over my imagination is Hel. I like to think of myself as broken and dark like good soil just wanting seed.

About Me

A spiritual eco-feminist with an intellectual tendency toward non-theism. I'm also stay-at-home parent and a green homemaker with a Ph.D. in women's studies in religion. I teach history courses at a community college and give historical presentations in nineteenth-century costume. Very much like Superman, no one can identify me when I remove my glasses. Finally, I'm a nerd, the kind of nerd who actually used a Star Trek book to keep her place in her Harry Potter book.